Discrimination? Australian men can’t sit next to unaccompanied minors

Australian men are up in arms over airline policies that prevent male passengers from sitting in the seat next to unaccompanied minors.

A male nurse, Daniel McCluskie, 31, said last week he was humiliated after Qantas made him switch seats with a woman to get him away from a 10-year-old girl, The Age reports.

“After the plane had taken off, the air hostess thanked the woman that had moved but not me, which kind of hurt me or pissed me off a bit more because it appeared I was in the wrong, because it seemed I had this sign I couldn’t see above my head that said ‘child molester’ or ‘kiddie fiddler’ whereas she did the gracious thing and moved to protect the greater good of the child.”

A similar incident occurred at Virgin Australia, where fireman Johnny McGirr, 33, sitting next to two boys, ages 8 and 10, was forced to move as part of company policy, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

“[The attitude of the airline] is ‘we respect you but as soon as you board a Virgin airline you are a potential pedophile’, and that strips away all the good that any male does regardless of his standing in society, his profession or his moral attitudes,” he said.

Virgin Australia has announced it was rethinking its policy. British Airways changed a similar policy in 2010 after a lawsuit, agreeing to seat unaccompanied minors in a “safe but non-discriminatory manner.”

In the U.S., there are no regulations governing the seating of unaccompanied minors, and no evidence could be found that airlines have similar policies. In 2009, a woman reported that her 13-year-old daughter was molested by an Ugandan man while traveling alone to Oakland from Philadelphia on a United Airlines flight, and later filed suit against the man and the airline, SF Weekly reported.